Company Outline
In 1993, John Scott, the CEO of XL TechGroup, with several other founders, formed a company called XL Vision, with majority funding from Safeguard Scientifics. Using the precursor version of the current XL TechGroup methodology, they created eight companies, six of which achieved successful exits either through trade sales or IPOs.
In 2002, XL TechGroup was formed as a completely new, value-creation company. Its key guiding principles include:
- The market (not the technology) must come first;
- Building a disruptive, market-changing company must have systematic foundations;
- The development of such companies is a non-linear process (i.e. strategies must adapt to the changes they produce in the market), so it is imperative to retain control and guide those strategies.
Incorporated in the USA, XL TechGroup successfully listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange in October 2004 in an IPO that raised £22.6 million and attracted a top quality list of institutional investors. This offering provided the cash necessary to develop existing opportunities within the Company's pipeline, as well as to create new opportunities to refresh the pipeline.
XL TechGroup’s companies are:
PetroAlgae was created by XL TechGroup in September 2006 to commercialize a proprietary library of algae that combines the unique characteristics of rapid growth rate and high lipid content. The algae are cultivated in modular bioreactors that can be operated cost-effectively at commercial scale. Harvest occurs on a daily basis, producing up to 200 times more feedstock oil per acre than traditional crops such as soybeans.
TyraTech was created by XL TechGroup in May 2004 and is developing and commercializing highly effective, proprietary insecticide and parasiticide products which incorporate unique blends of safer, natural, plant oil derived active ingredients. TyraTech's product pipeline addresses a diversity of pesticide market opportunities in human and animal treatments; domestic, commercial and hospitality facilities, as well as farms and fields. TyraTech was listed on AIM in June 2007.